I just remembered, I actually had one other opportunity to taste this wine recently (the new 2006 Ridge Santa Cruz Mountains Estate), in the context of a “trade” tasting, and I happened to be able to taste it with an outstanding cheese; Cowgirl Creamery’s “Mt. Tam.” Based in Point Reyes Station, CA, Cowgirl Creamery makes some astonishingly fine cheeses, and the Mt. Tam is no exception. It’s a pasteurized cow’s milk cheese that utilizes vegetarian microbial rennet, and it is organic. (It also, by the way, won First Prize at the American Cheese Society Competition: soft-ripened category)! It’s earthy in a mushroomy sort of way, and definitely funky; but highly funky delicious! Its soft, smooth, concentrated triple-cream middle is wrapped in a rind that I can only describe as mouth-wateringly pungent; it was actually a perfect complement to the young cabernet sauvignon-based blend that is the Santa Cruz Mountains Estate right now; the youthful acidity provides a great counterbalancing cut to the warm, buttery triple-cream density, and the funky Mt. Tam Rind accents and draws out all the complex herbality currently available in the wine. I must confess, I was a bit woozy afterwards! Quite a treat …
Posts Tagged ‘Food Pairing’
To Balsamic Or Not To Balsamic: Red Wine & Mushrooms
April 24, 2009We just got a new Panini griller at home. I haven’t used it yet, but whatever color Portabello mushrooms are, that’s the color I’ve been dreaming in since we got it. And in this dream, I break the stems off, and I wash the mushrooms in cool water. Then I cut long thin grooves into their crowns. Then I pad them with paper towels, and let them rest after their ordeal. In the interim, I pour olive oil into a shallow pie glass. And I pour in some red wine (this changes each time I dream; most recently, it was Chilean carménère for some reason). And I shake in some home-grown and home-dried basil. And I shake in a pinch or two of Italian herbed salt. I shake it, and then I let it rest too. Then I pour olive oil into a small skillet, and wait for it to heat. While it heats, I slice up two cloves of garlic; chunky, not fine. And when the oil is ready, in goes the garlic; it just barely sizzles, I just barely smile.
I have a bottle of 05 Geyserville, and I open it. I decant it. I double decant it. The garlic is starting to brown (the oil is at a very low temperature). I am starting to thirst. One for the chef, one for the garlic. One more for the chef. I smile obviously. The garlic in pink and brown, and ready. It goes into the pie glass.
While I wait for the mixture to cool down, I have more Geyserville. This is the moment of truth; I’ve heard it said umpteenth times that one shouldn’t mix vinegar-based items with red wine. But if I just put a dollop of balsamic in the pie glass, and then I put those portabellos in upside down, so that that lovely mixture just seeps into those grooves and permeates the mushrooms inner flesh, and if I then heated the griller, and if I then put those mushrooms on that griller when it was hot, then that balsamic addition would get a little sticky, and a little sweet, and a little burny, and it would counterbalance the bite of the garlic, the viscosity of the oil, and the herbality of the basil, in such a way that I would be so, so happy. And the kitchen would smell so sexy. In fact, the whole house would smell so sexy. So sexy that, when I open and decant the special 97 Lytton Syrah that I’ve been saving I would almost become woozy. But what have I done? Red wine, really, really good red wine, and something marinated in vinegar? What have I done? Have you done it? What happened? Enquiring minds want to know …
